


All My Dreams Turned to Dust

by farrah_yondale



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: (warning) Lorenz expressing that he wants to die, Character Death, Claurenz Week (Fire Emblem), Crimson Flower, Hurt No Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22410259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farrah_yondale/pseuds/farrah_yondale
Summary: Fodlan’s new dawn, drenched in blood. Scorched in fire.(For Claurenz Week 2020 Day 5: Separation)
Relationships: Lorenz Hellman Gloucester/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 11
Kudos: 73
Collections: Claurenz Week: Winter 2020





	All My Dreams Turned to Dust

Fodlan’s new dawn, drenched in blood. Scorched in fire.

Lorenz is the only one brave enough to catch Claude’s body when it falls, the only one brave enough to be suspected a traitor by cradling the enemy’s head to his chest. Edelgard can be forgiving when she wants to, but the others might not be so sympathetic.

Claude’s chest rises, irregular, heaving. Lorenz’s hand is on it, unmindful of all the blood. Blood everywhere, blood ribboning down to the cobble-stoned port of Derdriu, forming networks of scarlet veins between the cracks.

Lorenz considers using what little white magic he’d learned for emergencies. But he knows better.

White magic is meant for staving wounds. Not death.

“Lorenz…” Claude rasps. His hand reaches out for Lorenz’s cheek but misses, unsteady, and brushes his lips instead, painting a stroke of blood to Lorenz’s chin. “Hey. I missed you,” he finally says when Lorenz doesn’t indulge his mock aloofness.

Lorenz wants to cry, wants to apologize profusely, wants to tell him so many things he should have told him before, but he bites his lip. Claude speaks on borrowed time, and what Lorenz wants more than anything is to hear him speak.

“My dreams…” Claude tenses when his wound bites deep. His throat whistles when he breathes, and the sound is worse to Lorenz’s ears than the scream of a child. “My dreams, Lorenz. You have to…have to promise me…You’ll protect my people…”

Lorenz only lets go of Claude for a second to wipe his tears and nods.

“I wanted to see my parents one last time…” he breathes. “Take my body back to Almyra.”

“Claude,” Lorenz chokes out, when Claude’s eyes begin to close. He doesn’t know if the words are really true, what and where and how but he can’t bring himself to be hesitant now, of all times. “I love you.”

Claude smiles weakly.

He stops speaking after that.

He still breathes—however shallow—and his heart still beats—however faint and sparse—for another few minutes before he stills completely. Lorenz buries his face into Claude’s chest and sobs.

“Cla…ude…” Every syllable comes out with each wrack of his sobs. “I’m so...rr…y. I...m so...rry.”

“Lorenz…” A hand is on his shoulder and before Lorenz can even register or care whose it is, he slaps it away.

“Leave me!” he hisses, turning his head only briefly to see the blurred outline of Edelgard. Hubert stands behind her, clearly offended, as he is wont to do when it comes to Edelgard’s well-being, but Lorenz couldn’t care! Let Hubert kill him, torture him, throw him in a cell! He’d rather be with his love, wherever he might have gone now. Who knew? Could the souls of a native of a Fodlan and a native of Almyra end up in the same place?

“Why you…” Hubert starts.

“Hubert, stop,” Edelgard orders. She kneels down, beside Lorenz and he thought he saw a hint of regret over her face. “Lorenz…we have to go.”

“Leave me, _please_ ,” Lorenz sobs.

Edelgard squeezes her hand over Lorenz’s shoulder and this time, he says nothing.

“Ferdinand will stay with you. We’ll gather our forces and leave the port in an hour.”

Lorenz wanted to hit her. Was death so simple for her?

But it was not Edelgard Lorenz despised right now. Edelgard, the Flame Emperor. The tyrant of Fodlan. What a joke. She’d been hesitant to take Claude’s life, knowing distantly his ties to Almyra, but Byleth had insisted. They had to take Claude’s life, or he might have come back to usurp Edelgard’s throne. What kind of tyrant had to take orders from some half-baked god?

Despite her reputation as ice cold, at least Edelgard displayed some kind of emotion at Claude’s death. Byleth stood there, stone-faced as ever. What good had it done to take Claude’s life?

If Lorenz weren’t so stricken with grief, he might have actually hit Byleth.

Lorenz clings to Claude’s body. He presses his cheek to Claude’s. It’s still warm, it could still be him just sound asleep. He could wake up. He could open his eyes and make fun of Lorenz’s tears and scold him for falling for another of his tricks and they would laugh about it years from now.

Lorenz places a kiss over Claude’s cheek. He didn’t care if Ferdinand were watching. If he’d report back to the Emperor, if it revealed him as a weak link in the iron chain Edelgard had wrapped tight around Fodlan.

He didn’t care about anything, anymore.

“If you would be so kind as to grant me permission to leave,” Lorenz managed evenly with a sniff. “I would like to return Claude’s body to Almyra.”

Bold. For him to demand such things so soon after a shameless display of weakness. Edelgard regarded Lorenz closely in the war room, empty now, save for Hubert who was practically latched to Edelgard and didn’t really count.

“Frankly, I don’t think I’d be much of an asset to you, anyway,” Lorenz went on when Edelgard stayed silent. “You don’t need my support, when you still have my father’s.”

In actuality, Lorenz might have preferred to stay here. Edelgard’s wrath terrified him. But Claude’s parents’ grief terrified him more. He’d made a promise to him, however. It had been Lorenz’s negligence, Lorenz’s cowardice that had led to this. He could not afford to be a coward now.

“You have my permission,” Edelgard finally said over the looks of protest on Hubert’s face. “Take all the time you need. But if you’re willing to come back, we’d be happy to have you.”

Lorenz tucked his hand over his chest and managed a curt bow. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

Numbness still tingled through his fingers and around his lips from crying all afternoon. He planned to pack quickly, take the first volunteers who’d be willing to transport Claude’s body to Almyra on such short notice, but his mind was hazy, as numb as the tips of his fingers.

“Lysithea?”

She ignored him, shoving whatever article of clothing that seemed to be in her hand into each of their knapsacks. She did not pause, working fast like a madwoman. Only after Lorenz had stared at her in shock for a good few minutes, did she finally huff a response.

“Lorenz! I want to leave.” She shoved a pair of mismatched socks into Lorenz’s knapsack. “I want to go with you. We’re going tonight, right?”

“Yes, Lysithea, but…” Lorenz was hardly in place to chide her. To hold a conversation with her. He had hardly a moment to register her emotions before she was running up to him, embracing him and crying into his chest.

He pet her hair, at a loss at what else to do and let the sounds of her sobs lull him.

Lysithea cried the whole way to Almyra.

Lorenz couldn’t bring himself to cry with her. He was suddenly so afraid of everything now. Yes, he’d sided with the Empire, but only because it offered Claude some strategic leverage. He’s always leaned on Claude’s strategy. The world did not exist without him in it. And now he was gone, and so was the world Lorenz inhabited. A stranger in a strange land.

Lorenz opened the door to a scream.

“Chavdar? Chavdar!”

It was Ursula von Riegan, her face contorted with the type of a grief only a mother could stand to bear. Her hands shook an inch from her face as she bolted from the other end of the room to her son’s body. She collapsed so violently onto him that for a moment, Lorenz mistakenly thought she had fainted.

But that muffled scream could not have come from an unconscious woman.

The entire hall filled with the screams of Claude’s relatives. His sisters or cousins or aunts, Lorenz didn’t know, but the vast majority of them were older women, all congregating around Claude’s body, crying and beating their chests in anguish. Some of them children, stared on in confusion.

Only a man Lorenz assumed to be Claude’s father stood by in silence. Lorenz thought him cold-hearted, awful even, to stay neutral in the face of his son’s death. And then he saw the tears roll down his cheeks and his Adam’s apple bob from a deliberate swallow and Lorenz understood. He was trying to stay sane, for the sake of everyone in the room.

Ursula’s face shot up from Claude’s chest, furious.

“Who did this?” she demanded. “Who did this?”

_Me,_ Lorenz thought. _I did this_.

Instead he dropped to his knees in a sob. He slapped his hand to his mouth. It was inappropriate for him of all people to cry right now. This was Claude’s family. They deserved to grieve. He did not.

But he did, anyway, and he joined the rest of Claude’s family in mourning for what felt like hours.

“Edelgard von Hresvelg,” Ursula vowed. Her voice shook with rage, deep and coarse, but her face revealed her exhaustion. She was in no condition to take revenge. Homayun behind her rubbed his hand over her shoulder as if to say as much. “I will kill her.”

“What will it accomplish, love?” Homayun asked. “It won’t bring Chavdar back.”

“Nader is already at Fodlan’s Locket,” Lorenz started hesitantly. _Seeking revenge_. He stared at them like an assassin at his target’s mercy after being caught. He felt rude. Wrong. Everything was wrong. It felt like Ursula and Homayun hated him, and they deserved to.

“I will kill her,” Ursula choked out and dissolved into tears.

“You haven’t slept in two days.”

“And you have?”

“It’s different for me.”

Lorenz had been staring at his hands the whole time. Despite how the Almyrans must have felt towards Fodlan right now, the king and queen had offered them their own separate rooms. During the day, Lysithea chose to stay huddled up with Lorenz, consumed by that childish fear of loneliness after Claude had died. When she said that, however, Lorenz’s head shot up.

“What does that mean?” he asked her.

“I mean…” Maybe it had only felt right to finally tell him then. That she was going to abandon him, too. “I don’t have a lot of time. I’ve been…sick since I was young.”

Her fainting spells. Her weak constitution. It made sense then, as many things finally did in the face of death.

Lorenz’s voice was distant, his mouth barely forming over the words. “Hilda is dead. Marianne is dead. Ignatz is dead. Claude is…” Why did it hurt so much to say it for him? “Dead. And now you. You plan to leave me, too?”

Lysithea hugged him. “I’m sorry. If I could stay…I would.” She leaned back, hands still wrapped around his waist. “But I don’t have much time.”

“You wish to return to the Empire?”

Lysithea stayed quiet. She parted from him slowly, like she was afraid he might shatter to pieces if she let him go.

“I wish I was dead,” Lorenz burst out suddenly. “I wish I had died with him.” He was not crying, by some miracle, but he felt like a ghost, distant and transparent. “Who will ever love me like he did?”

Lysithea held his hand, and for some reason, the gesture had him unraveling again.

“I want him back,” Lorenz cried. “I want him back.”

When Lorenz first joined the Empire, he spent nights lying awake, missing Claude terribly.

Before now, his agony seemed temporary. He would bury his face in his pillow, dreaming of how much he missed Claude. How he missed that carefree peal of laughter, the way his eyes shone in pride when they’d successfully pulled off a mission. He missed the deep rumble of his voice whenever he’d say something ludicrous and Lorenz would admonish him snobbishly and they would both melt down in giggles. He missed the few, stolen moments they’d had to lay in bed together, and Claude would take Lorenz’s cold hands and keep them warm.

But that was all gone. Claude would never come back now.

By now, it seemed most of the palace knew Lorenz’s position in Claude’s heart. For him to stay here, long after Lysithea had left, waiting for the burial. Lazing around with a mask face, staring off into the distance. They must have known. His parents must have known what he and Claude were to each other.

Claude’s relatives hardly spoke to him. He assumed they were suspicious or fearful, not because he was from Fodlan, but because of what he’d brought with him: news of their crown prince’s death. Homayun was the only one sensitive to Lorenz’s isolation, giving him pats on the shoulder when he could manage more than strained neutrality on his face. Ursula gave Lorenz dagger eyes if she ever deigned to come near him.

“He’s been buried.”

Lorenz sat out on the courtyard floor. It was one of many of the palace gardens, lush with palm trees and grass and all sorts of flowers Lorenz couldn’t bother to retrieve the names of. He’d heard one of the palace servants whisper that this was Claude’s favorite place to meditate, so Lorenz had come here, searching for pieces of Claude.

He was surprised it was Ursula speaking to him. She folded the back lapel of her _kamiz_ so that it fanned out behind her and sat edged up to Lorenz.

“By his family. By…us.” Her eyes searched him for words, as if he had any left in him to begin with. “I’m sorry you couldn’t be there.”

Lorenz finally looked up at her, his eyes prickly with inflammation. Ursula’s lids were just as swollen as his, and for a moment, a strange sense of amusement spread through him. They were probably the two who’d cried the most in these last few days.

“You and Claude…” she started.

“Weren’t anything formal,” he finished.

“But he loved you.”

Lorenz swallowed. “I don’t know.”

“ _I_ do.”

Lorenz felt the familiar sting of tears at his eyes but tried to hold them in out of respect for the queen.

“You might have become a part of this family if he’d…had more time.” She smiled. “So I intend to treat you that way.”

“Thank you, _Shahbanu_.”

“You can just call me Ursula.”

“Ursula. You have…” Lorenz said. “His smile.”

She smiled even wider at that. “So I’ve been told.”

And for a moment, there seemed to be a mutual understanding between them: that Claude was gone, but they still carried parts of him within each other. They could learn about him, if they learned about each other. They could love him, if they loved each other.

**Author's Note:**

> A day late, I’m sorry, but I wanted to fill at least one of the Claurenz week prompts and lucky for all of you, today I woke up and wanted to hurt everyone’s feelings. I will only consider myself a success if I made at least 3 of you cry.


End file.
